The local office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith announced that it will pay all legal costs and provide free legal counsel for anyone arrested during peaceful Soviet Jewry protests at the Soviet Embassy here.
“This offer is effective immediately, and will be extended not just to those already arrested, but to those who may be arrested at future protests outside the Embassy,” Edward Leavy, the ADL’s Regional Director, said yesterday at a press conference at the Washington-Maryland regional office.
Over 130 rabbis, cantors, ministers, Hebrew school teachers, college students and others have already been arrested in protests at the Embassy since last May, when the Washington Board of Rabbis began sponsoring a series of planned arrests to dramatize the plight of Soviet Jews.
BACKGROUND OF ADL’S DECISION
In two separate court hearings this month, 43 rabbis and a Lutheran minister were convicted of violating a District of Columbia statute that prohibits demonstrations within 500 feet of an Embassy. Five of them decided last week to go to jail rather than accept an offer of probation. They began serving 15-day sentences last Friday.
Spokesmen of the Washington Board of Rabbis have repeatedly stressed that the hope of those who went to jail was to focus attention on the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union and not on their own imprisonment.
An appeal of the District Court’s refusal of bond for the rabbis pending an appeal of their convictions was rejected last Friday, according to Dan Goldstein, an attorney for one of the groups of rabbis convicted this month.
Goldstein, who is also chairman of the ADL’s Baltimore Law Committee, and Edward Levin, a counterpart in the ADL’s D.C. office, will coordinate the program to provide the legal costs for arrested protestors. This will be the first time the committees — which include some 80 attorneys as members — will be involved in the defense of individuals facing criminal prosecution, Leavy said.
SIMILAR AID TO ANTI-APARTHEID PROTESTERS
Leavy also indicated that the committees will offer similar services to anyone prosecuted for demonstrating outside the South African Embassy. None of the hundreds of anti-apartheid protestors arrested to date has been prosecuted, something which has prompted charges of “selective prosecution” by the convicted rabbis and their attorneys.
Two other groups of Soviet Jewry protestors are scheduled to be tried next month and might also consider opting for jail, although no decisions have been made, according to spokesmen for the Washington Board of Rabbis.
Meanwhile, Jewish groups are seeking to use the conviction of the rabbis and the imprisonment of the five to stimulate heightened Jewish involvement in the Soviet Jewry issue throughout the country, a Soviet Jewry activist said. He said a telegram campaign has been launched to express support for the rabbis and their cause to Attorney General Edwin Meese.
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